The price of petrol is stabilizing.  The price of unleaded 95 petrol is R12,89 at the moment and it looks like we are heading to a drop of about 14 cents per litre in May.  It will depend on the basic fuel price as well as the exchange rate in the last week of the month.  The currency obviously has a huge impact - although it is sad to say at around R12,00 to the Dollar, has been relatively stable for the month.  It was after all R6,50 to the Dollar only 7 or 8 years ago and if it was that strong now we would be paying considerably less.  We are still fortunately below the peak petrol prices of R14 that we saw a year ago but I do think at some time in the future we will see international prices go up and if that is combined with a weak rand R14 and even R15 a litre will be breached.

It is good to see that the UK has reacted quickly on the issue of revenge porn.  A new law has just come into place which says that if you distribute a private sexual image of someone without their consent and with the intention to cause them distress, you can get up to 2 years in jail.  The definition of a sexual image would include anything they say that “a reasonable person would consider to be sexual” and that that would include somebody who is posing in a sexually provocative way.  

In other words, the photograph does not have to be of somebody in the nude, but underwear pictures for example posted with the intention of causing someone distress could lead to you spending 2 years in jail.  I think this is good legislation and I think that it needs to be enacted around the world.  It is tragic that so many people, although this is generally something that happens with younger people, can cause so much distress when a relationship goes wrong and their partner – usually a male – starts distributing their pictures around.  In America, an operator of a revenge porn site called u.gotposted.com was recently sentenced to 18 years in jail for hosting the revenge porn photographs.  Media reports bring this home in South Africa – the young lady in a school video, a few years ago, which showed her having sex with two men, has now committed suicide.  Laws like this would have frightened off people from posting and circulating such videos and potentially saved her life had we had them.

I think one of the growing trends that we are going to see in years to come is people finally revolting against the fees that they are charged by financial advisors.  More and more books are coming out on the topic, more and more is being said about it on radio and TV shows and basically we are all enriching financial advisors to achieve very little.  They don’t partake in your losses when they guide you into losses, but when you make a profit they want a healthy slice of that.  

A variety of products from retirement annuities to Unit Trusts and various other policies simply allow huge slices of the funds to be paid to advisors – in most cases for little or no advice and in most cases they don’t beat the market and they certainly don’t beat the market year after year.  People are going to start showing much more interest in low cost Index funds in future and the bottom line is whatever financial product you get, you should try and ensure that the costs that you are paying are not more than 1,25% at most.  3% may not sound like a lot to most people, but when you think that those fees are charged annually, and that same R10 000,00 of yours is getting a R300,00 charge every single year for the rest of your life until you retire, then you will start to realise what the actual impact is.  Of course, you would not be planning to retire on R10 000,00, so whether it is R100 000,00 or R200 000,00 or whatever amounts you have saved, when you start applying 3% against that money instead of 1,25% or less, you start giving away substantial sums of your money every year to some shiny young stockbroker, or “investment advisor” who is driving his Ferrari on the way home regardless of whether he made any money for your portfolio or not.

I was really impressed by the latest product that Amazon is beginning to roll out for its members in America.  I don’t know how long it is going to take to get to South Africa, but it is certainly something that will suit Woolworths, Pick ‘n Pay or any of the major retailers.  Essentially, you get little buttons which are branded, and you place them near the place where you would typically use that product. For example, you would put the washing powder button on the washing machine and then next time you start running out of washing powder all you do is press the button and Amazon will, presumably within a day or two, deliver to your house more of that product!  

The products that already have these buttons include toilet paper, tissues, babies’ nappies, wet wipes, water and all manner of soaps, dishwashing liquids, detergents, razor blades, shaving creams, etc, etc.  If your children press a button by mistake you can stop it because you always get an order alert to your phone and you can cancel it if it is not correct.  I guess its success is going to rely on the people pressing the buttons to continue pressing lots of buttons in the house, because it is not going to be that profitable if they have to drive around to your house simply to drop off some wet wipes, but no doubt this is something you are going to see in South Africa in a few years’ time.

I chose the blog title, because that is exactly how CNN introduced the issue of the xenophobia once again flaring up in South Africa.  It is tragic when we have to see that once again we are on CNN and SKY TV for xenophobic violence.  A 14 year old boy was killed, as we all know, amongst numerous others.  To tie a 14 year old up and then set him on fire is just absolute disgusting savagery.  It is a tragedy that a culture that encourages Ubuntu and where everyone is a brother or a sister is so unwelcoming to immigrants from nearby countries.  A Mail and Guardian editorial remarked that “Some South Africans are irked by the business competition offered by foreigners and the spectacle of Africans who are more successful than they are.  Perhaps because of South Africa’s culture of entitlement, the entrepreneurial spirit and hard work so evident in immigrant communities has become a source of resentment.”

CNN interviewed our Minister of Home Affairs, Malusi Gigaba who mentioned his meetings with the King of the Zulu people who recently made some disgraceful remarks that foreigners are parasitic ticks. What we need is something that we don’t see often and that is that all of the people that are involved in this violence need to be charged, punished severely and those who are involved in the murders can spend 30 or 50 years in jail.  After the London riots, the British police and the justice system reacted so quickly and so harshly that you can rest assured you will not see those types of riots again for as long as people remember the very harsh sentences that were given to those who stole even small items.  We need to see similar harsh action by our police and our judicial system and charges against all of those who want to make idiotic statements, such as President Jacob Zuma’s son, Edward.  

Steyn City is open for sales and I was told that they sold R550 million worth of property on their first weekend.  The infrastructure is amazing, but of course it is going to be a very densely packed area.  Apart from houses, which are to be built on pieces of land that they are selling for R5 million, there are also going to be thousands of townhouses in the complex which is going to have a range of up and coming young people to billionaires, all living in the same estate – which will certainly make for an interesting mix.  I played the golf course and I really enjoyed it, particularly since it is the closest golf course to me, other than where I live.  I have always had a fondness for Serengeti on the East Rand, other than the fact that it is too far away and to me you can see the Jack Nicklaus effect on both these courses.  The Club at Steyn City most closely resembles Serengeti of any other golf course I have played, and it is a wonderful addition to the golf courses in Gauteng.  It has the special green all winter grass that is so nice to play on in winter when everything else is dead and dry, and a lot of risk reward holes – short par force – where you can either try and drive the green or lay up, short of water and take the more safe option.  The course is dwarfed by the house of Douw Steyn where just the water feature and the dam below it, I am told, cost R30 million.  He has a helicopter landing pad about 70 metres from his house and I guess at R250 million one can really live it up in a house like that!  No doubt his staff bill will far exceed the average person’s monthly bond repayments!

I have always been particularly sensitive to criticism, and with the firm’s advertising profile, we tend to have people who look out for us in order to have a go at us.  I saw that recently with a driver of ours who, despite previous written warnings and extensive lectures on being aware, not only of following the rules of the road, but they are in fact an extension of the brand, driving branded cars, decided to break the laws.  

A photograph of him driving in a yellow lane was re-tweeted more than 100 times and it was particularly embarrassing for me.  We took decisive action and suspended him, pending a disciplinary enquiry, and given that this was not his first offence, it led to his dismissal.  The tweets on Twitter and on Facebook were all about whether or not our firm would actually do something about it.  The second we did, we came in for a new round of criticism from people who suggested that a warning letter would be enough, explaining to somebody to follow the rules of the road would be the way to go, etc.  It reminded me that you simply cannot win on the Internet and you can rest assured that if I had announced that he was going to get a warning letter, there would have been an even bigger reaction from people saying we don’t take such issues seriously, and that just a letter for such illegal behaviour is unacceptable.

Whatever steps you take, you are going to be exposed to criticism and you really cannot ever win.  It reminds me of the Aristotle quote, because there is a way to avoid all criticism, and that is that Aristotle said, “To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”  It is a good reminder that if you want to be successful, then you are never going to avoid criticism in one way or another at some time or other and the only way to truly avoid criticism is to do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.  If you are outspoken, opinionated and out there, you are always unfortunately going to attract criticism – generally from those who say nothing and do nothing.

The fifth season of Game of Thrones starts on 12 April 2015 and it will no doubt be anticipated by many fans.  What I found interesting is the way that the television channels are combating online piracy and that is through making the programmes available in South Africa at the same time as they are made available overseas.  That does not mean you would want to watch it at the time that it is actually broadcast, but they will now show the shows for example at a reasonable time at 9pm on a Thursday, but if you want to watch it as it comes out, you can then watch it live at 3am on Monday 13 April 2015 on channel 102!  This means that people really don’t have the need anymore to go online and look for copies of popular shows because they can access them immediately.  It is a far cleverer way to control  advertising revenues and not make people wait 6 months or 6 weeks to see programmes where they would have read about what happened on the Internet long before it is broadcast in South Africa.

I’ve always had a blog, where I deal with largely legal issues, at www.lawblog.co.za.  It does not get updated very often – probably about 12 times a year.  What has always interested me is that the number one blog on that site is probably the only one that does not have anything to do with law, and was probably posted up by me incorrectly to that blog.  The blog dealt was headed “Complaints about robots or traffic in Johannesburg? Who you gonna call?”  the blog was pretty short and it just said that it is up to all of us to take action more often and not just grumble and gave the details of the Johannesburg Road Agency who can be e-mailed at [email protected] or faxed at 011 298 5173 or called at 011 375 5555.  Since then, I’ve had a steady stream of intersections with robot problems or other traffic related issues that have been reported on the site.  I get my staff to follow up on those that we can, but I do hope that those who write in are also sending off their complaints to the e-mail address – I’ve had some good success with a number of things that I have reported to it and so I will repeat it again - [email protected].

Long before E-files, there were X-files.  The series ran from 1993 to 2002 with Fox Mulder and Dana Scully trying to prove that the truth is out there!  It was quite a surprise to hear that Fox, a channel in America, is bringing back the paranormal show for what they call a “special six episode event”.  Both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will return to play the title roles as FBI agents and the original creator, Chris Carter, will also oversee the new six episode series.  They have not disclosed any date as to when it will be aired, but no doubt it is going to be all over the news when it is.

I have never been a great fan of Microsoft.  That probably started for me, after they got what was, to me, an inferior word processor, to defeat WordPerfect.  They did that by bundling Word, Excel and a whole lot of software together for pretty much the same price as WordPerfect and so you got a lot more value as a company if you took Microsoft Office at that time.  I’ve got used to working on Word now, and that is what I work on, because the rest of the world does, but I still think that it is an inferior word processor to WordPerfect.  I pretty much felt the same about Internet Explorer, which also dominated the market, so I was quite surprised to read that Internet Explorer is not the dominant web browser around the world – and that Google’s Chrome browser now has 42% of market share with Internet Explorer in second place with 17%.  Apparently, the next version of Windows, which will be called Windows 10, is going to include a new browser which is called Spartan.  Hopefully it will be a more modern browser and one that certainly has less security issues than Internet Explorer has had over the years.